Authorship row hits Bombay Dreams

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">LONDON: <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Bombay Dreams</span>, Lord Lloyd-Webber''s latest West End musical success, has been hit by a row over its authorship on the eve of its launch on Broadway.<br />Farrukh Dhondy, who, as commissioning editor of Channel 4, brought the film <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Bandit Queen</span> to the big screen, has fired off a series of open letters to the impresario, warning him the show "may turn into a nightmare".<br />Lloyd-Webber has responded by contacting his lawyers to attack the "unfounded claims".<br />Dhondy, 57, was hired at an early stage to write a story outline for the musical. It was one of the four handed to Meera Syal, the actress and author, when she was brought in to pen the script for the 4.5 million pounds show.<br />Dhondy claims one of his storylines plays a big part in the musical, but there is no acknowledgment of his role. He says he devised the story of a boy, brought up by eunuchs in the Mumbai slums, who is hired to disrupt a Miss World contest but is discovered and becomes a Bollywood actor. The hero of the musical, Akaash, grows up in a slum and one of his best friends is an eunuch.<br />He also alleges that a sub-plot in which Priya, a film-maker''s daughter, is at loggerheads with her father, was written by him more than 15 years ago. He says it originates from his own 1986 play <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Film Film Film</span>, an adaptation of <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">King Lear</span> that featured the young, unknown Syal, now famous for her roles in television''s <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Goodness Gracious Me</span> and <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">The Kumars at No. 42</span>.<br />Both Lloyd-Webber and Syal deny this; they say the idea was in one of the other three treatments handed to Syal. Dhondy said: "Maybe I have not been given enough credit. That is what I am after. When I went to see the premiere, I was astounded. It started as I began my treatment with Bombay waking up, the very scene I described." The musical was largely pilloried by the critics, but its fortunes have been reversed in the past fortnight with demand for tickets extending its run until at least March 2003 and talks about staging it in Canada, Germany and Japan as well as New York.<br />A spokesman for Lloyd-Webber''s Really Useful Group said: "Farrukh Dhondy worked on an outline for the story. Substantial elements of the plot were already in existence before he became involved and indeed a number of elements, including a key scene based upon the disruption of a Miss World contest, were drawn from real-life incidents. However, neither this treatment nor those of the other writers were, in Andrew''s opinion, right for the basis of a musical."<br />Syal, whose film adaptation of her book <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Anita and Me</span> is released in the autumn, said she was "surprised and bewildered" by Dhondy''s claims. <br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">The Sunday Times</span></div> </div>